Stop Making Shiva Your Girlfriend

Why did this fun video inspire me to write this blog? Because it’s so true and many of us women do it all the time, especially in intimate relationships. We say we want men to just listen and not fix us and sometimes that may be appropriate, however know that you could be asking him to go against his own nature when you want this……

I did this recently with a man who showed me how ridiculous I was, without reacting to me or making me wrong. He witnessed my incessant need to look at the potential problems instead of the simple reality of the situation we were discussing. I was then able to laugh about what I did and immediately respect him for holding his ground. What could be more sexy than feeling my tail between my legs in those moments?!

We complain when a man is not man enough for us, yet sometimes we do our best to create that situation. Have you ever caught yourself doing this? Are you aware of how you might diminish men around you from being who they really are? If you are a woman reading this blog, it’s highly likely that you have picked up this kind of behaviour from personal development concepts around you. Ones that say your partner should be the Shiva of your dreams and your best girlfriend, all at the same time. Worst part is we claim the request to have him ‘just listen’ to our unconscious rambling as conscious communication!

One of the world’s most respected voices on sexuality and passion in long term relationship, psychologist Esther Perel, speaks of this in her brilliant book, ‘Mating in Captivity’. She suggests that in this modern world we want our intimate partners to be our lover, parent, best friend, community and to even be God for us at all times! Such pressure and expectation that is bound to go unmet, will only lead to a break-down in passionate intimacy because it decreases or even kills polarity; which is the magnetic energy to create attraction.

Problem is, when you ask him to just listen and you don’t accept his clarity to help you, you are asking him to be your girlfriend. When you keep asking him to be your girlfriend, he may feel diminished in his natural male instincts. When he continually feels this from you, he may learn not to trust his instincts. And we all know at Tigress Yoga, just how important it is to be in touch with our instincts – it’s the same for men too. Please contribute to a more balanced world by encouraging men to be men!

Developing authentic friendships with other women around you, will help you feel more free to trust your sisters with personal issues you may need to share, so you can just be heard. This also means you leave him free to be your man! And for him to feel appreciated for what he does have to contribute to your life, eg. masculine simplicity is one of the greatest gifts men have to offer us. Lets encourage men to grow in their clarity and wisdom instead of asking him to be your girlfriend, by getting him involved in your emotionality. Because if you do, it’s something you might end up resenting him for.

I am suggesting that sometimes, when we say we just want him to listen, we are empowering the bitch in us instead of empowering the real women we are. Only men strongly in touch with their own inner nature will be able to see through the bitch routine. Many other men will fall into it and let you cut off their balls. Then things go pear-shaped with you both reacting to each other in all sorts of ways. We know as women that when we get him emotional, we silently lose faith in him for bowing down to our illusions. Often we don’t even know we are doing it. A man in his masculine strength will be patient, kind and present……yet he won’t let you disturb his desire for spacious emptiness and he won’t want to listen to you incessantly bullshitting yourself.

Stop trying to make Shiva your girlfriend. Let him be a man. Appreciate him if he has problem solving abilities that could simplify your life in beautiful ways. Allow him to be in his masculine strength so you can relax and soften into your feminine bliss. For a man with a strong masculine essence, his bliss is the emptiness of pure consciousness.

A man in touch with his Shiva essence won’t want to be your girlfriend.

Respect him for that.

His clarity, insight and strength will grow in your appreciation of his maleness.

With Love & deep appreciation to the few rare men who have known themselves well enough to lovingly silence my bitch

Dévashi xo

Note: Yes there is value in having him sometimes just listen. And a man’s advice won’t always be right for you but you can tell the difference by being in connection with your own instinctual body – comments that shut you down and have you feeling suppressed are not true Shiva energy. Hearing truth when you need it, delivered with love, will have you feeling ecstatic, grateful and full of relief. Trust the sensual intelligence of your body to know the difference.

+ huge gratitude to Jason Headley for creating this great video

www.jasonheadley.com

13 Responses to “Stop Making Shiva Your Girlfriend”

I love it when my woman needs to unload her tension and feelings in pointless conversation about everything. I find that if I just listen, without trying to fix her, she gradually feels more open and connected to me. It is like she needs to bring her feminine energy like a fragrance, that I breathe in until I am filled with her. Once I am full, she begins to become receptive and open and then I can call on my deepest male wisdom and authority to speak to her, not about what is happening out there in her world, but about what is happening in her. Ultimately that is where the healing begins. The source of her problems, anxiety and tension are in her and reflected in her thoughts, voices and emotional tension about things out there. Once I have breathed her essence in, then I may have the privilege to bring her back to her centre, validate her from her perfect core and let her know how I see her as perfect , natural beauty expressed in the weather of her being. There is nothing to fix in a woman. She just needs permission to be perfectly her in all her wildness, never too much, beautiful just the way she is and just the way she isn’t. Once she has released the ways in which she has been challenged by her world, the simple act of validation and acceptance allows her to open her senses to the fullness of her whole being.

I am smart, and can fix anything in the world. If I try to be smart with her and fix her, she closes and reacts. She does not want to be fixed. She wants to be appreciated, wants my still wisdom to penetrate her very core and give her movement of emotion and energy a centre which she can trust and be held upon. Without judgement, with complete acceptance, with total love, her storm of energy dissipates and she deepens, coming back to her truest, deepest power. The trick is to suspend my automatic tension seeking resolution mental response and breathe her in as a beautiful wild experience of natural beauty. Even when she is railing against me, covering me in her projection of blame, I see her need to connect to her centre, for me to hold her in my complete acknowledgement of her pure feminine energy. She is not her behaviour, her attitude or thoughts. She is not her moods, her pain, her anger or her jealousy. She is a manifestation of pure love in its unbounded natural glory. When I see her in her pain and storms I just hold true to the vision of her natural beauty and gradually she returns to love and radiance again.

Perhaps you can share this with your men. In the end what I want is what all men want, my woman to be completely expressed and anchored in the safety of my love and wisdom in all her ecstatic beauty.

I endured for years being forced to listen to problems that were easily fixed, and was roared at for not listening when I tried to show that the nail could be pulled out and not made into a source of holy pain.

Please speak to us with love, presence and humour in these moments so we are more able to listen. Emotional drama is the #1 thing that consumes a woman’s Shakti, and despite how it may appear, it’s not where we want to be. x

Fantastic article (very Deida-esque if you don’t mind me saying) ~ great timing too I think, seems like there’s a lot of much needed ‘looking out for the men’ in the news feeds of late. I know I have certainly been there more than a few times in the past. I am lucky that I have had men in my life and a man that can tell me when enough is enough. Maybe they have to repeat it a few times on the odd occasion, but eventually, I’ll get the hint It’s fantastic to be able to consciously reflect and offer authentic feedback for one another as men and women. And Yes, it does help bring balance and polarity in the world ~
I would also like to encourage a practice when with women friends, to be able to tell a sister if you feel or see she’s out of her integrity, or not impeccable with her speech, to “silence the bitch”, because lets face it, sometimes we can be terribly gossipy about little things that we really need not be gossipy about. This can be hard to do sometimes, we may feel afraid of upsetting our friends, and become a ‘yes woman’, when really, one wanted to be a ‘cut the crap’ woman. I want my friends to feel like they can call me out on my crap when I need it, and I want to be able to say, ‘hey, sister, you don’t need to say those things or do those things, I can see it’s a pattern or behavior you have and I don’t just feel but I know it’s not serving you, it certainly doesn’t serve me, and probably not anyone else either’….and it’s also like I would doing my sisters a disservice if I don’t speak up.

I totally appreciate these sentiments Devashi! They really strike a resonant chord with me. Thankyou for writing and putting it out here! Your words stimulate much within me and I wanted to share a few examples of men being incredible that I have been fortunate enough to have witnessed.

I think of the men who have been totally present with me in their ‘Man-ness’ and offered me outstanding responses that were often so far outside the more feminine kind of empathy and understanding I thought I was looking for or needing.

I think of the man who patiently listened to my jealous diatribe about his ex and who then calmly offered his perspective,
“babe, I think you need to take that feeling out into a paddock and shoot it. Put it out of its misery because its not doing anything for you and there’s no where good its gona go.” I laughed hysterically and peace ensued.

I think of the man who patiently and compassionately listened to my indignant and enraged ranting about feeling wronged by a friend and what I thought I should do about it. He calmly put his hands on my shoulders and offered, “if you listen quietly to your heart right now what does it tell you is the best response? Is doing anything really going to help the situation?” My anger quickly became a watershed and the charge released.

I have found men to be amazing, astute and astounding healers when they are in their man presence and how we need each other for evolution! Thankyou for the opportunity to relate about this Devashi!

Yes! Don’t you love how men can just make you laugh at what a moment prior was causing you pain!! I love how direct and Aussie that man’s comments were to you Ruth
We totally need each other,
Shiva + Shakti = bliss

Lovely article! Thank you from Tennessee USA where I see all kind of young men “cutting off their balls” to please their crazy “bitch” girlfriends…..would love to bring Tigress Yoga here….any chance? Great blog

I love this blog for so many reasons Devashi! Thank you for taking the time to weave it together.
It reminds me of the time I distinguished my beloved from my past partners … which I really had been dancing with like a girlfriend.
In fact the penny dropped on the dance floor when I noticed how differently I danced with Keith to my previous, well, girl-boyfriends
This blog articulates so well how that happens, why and how we can be lovingly self-aware about it with good humour.
I really appreciate a blog that’s written with trust in the author’s voice, evidence of research and a hint of the writer’s own ‘coming to conclusions’ as though it’s a totally lived out wisdom acquired from self-reflection. It’s an activating read!
This one’s a stand-out for me sister and I really appreciate your expertise and commitment to calling us all further into our truth, as women.
Love Cougs xo

Yes and thank you for all your reflections dear one, it was fun to write! We know we all do it at times

Unless there is a man actually in his ‘MAN’ presence, it can be difficult to distinguish what is what for us shaktis sometimes. There have been very few men in my relationships, who didn’t struggle to be strong in their masculine energy, and none of them were Australian, which is also intriguing.